“Sounds like the Trade Master talking,” Jondalar said.
“Speaking of trading, what are the Losadunai doing about those young men?” Willamar wanted to know. “We trade with them. I’d hate to have some trading party come down off the other side of that glacier and walk into a party of flatheads with revenge on their minds.”
“When we … I first heard about it, five years ago, they weren’t doing much,” Jondalar said, trying to avoid making reference to Thonolan. “They knew it was going on, some of the men were still calling it ‘high spirits,’ but Laduni became really upset, just talking about it. Then it got worse. We stopped to visit the Losadunai on our way back. The Clan men had started going out with their women when they were gathering food, guarding them, and those ‘high-spirited’ young men weren’t going to provoke the Clan men by going after the women then, so they went after a young woman of Laduni’s Cave—all of them—forced a young woman … before First Rites.”
“Oh, no! How could they, Jondé?” Folara said, bursting into tears.
“Great Mother’s Underground!” Joharran thundered.
“That’s just where they should be sent!” Willamar said.
“They are abominations! I can’t even imagine a strong enough punishment!” Zelandoni fumed.
Marthona, unable to say anything, had her hand on her chest and looked appalled.
Ayla had felt deeply for the young woman who had been assaulted and had tried to ease her anguish, but she couldn’t help but notice how much more strongly Jondalar’s kin had reacted to the news of a young woman of the Others being attacked by the gang than they had when they learned of the attacks on Clan women. When it was Clan women, they were offended, but when it was one of their own, they were outraged.
That, more than anything that had been said or done, made her understand the extent of the chasm that separated the two peoples. Then she wondered what their reactions would have been—inconceivable as the idea was to her—if it had been a gang of Clan men … flatheads that had committed such an abominable act on Zelandonii women?
“You can be sure the Losadunai are doing something about those young men, now,” Jondalar said. “The young woman’s mother was crying for blood retribution against the Cave of the leader of those degenerate men.”
“Ahhh, that’s bad news. What a difficult situation for the leaders,” Marthona said.
“It’s her right!” Folara proclaimed.
“Yes, of course, it’s her right,” Marthona said, “but then some kin or another, or the whole Cave, will resist and that could lead to fighting, maybe someone getting killed, and then someone wants revenge for that. Who knows where it would end up? What are they going to do, Jondalar?”
“Several Cave leaders sent runners with messages, and many of them got together and talked. They’ve agreed to send out trackers, find the young men, separate them to break up the gang, and then each Cave is going to deal with their own member individually. They will be severely punished, I imagine, but they’ll be given a chance to make restitution,” Jondalar explained.
“I’d say that’s a good plan, especially if they all agree to it, including the Cave of the instigator,” Joharran said, “and if the young men come peaceably, once they’ve been found…”
“I’m not sure about the leader, but I think the rest of them want to go home, and would agree to anything to be allowed back. They looked hungry, cold, and dirty, and not too happy,” Jondalar said.
“You saw them?” Marthona asked.
“That’s how we met the Clan couple. The gang had gone after the woman, they didn’t see the man around. But he had climbed up on a high rock to scout game and jumped down when they attacked his woman. Broke his leg, but it didn’t stop him from trying to fight them off. We happened upon them then; it was not far from the glacier we were getting ready to cross.” Jondalar smiled. “Between Ayla, Wolf, and me, not to mention the two Clan people, we chased them off in a hurry. There’s not much fight left in those boys. And with Wolf and the horses, and the fact that we knew who they were, when they had never seen us before, well, I think we put a scare in them.”
“Yes,” Zelandoni said thoughtfully. “I can see how it would.”
“You would have scared me,” Joharran said with a wry smile.
“Then Ayla convinced the Clan man to let her set his broken leg,” Jondalar continued. “We camped together for a couple of days. I made him a couple of sticks to lean on and help him walk, and he decided to go home. I was able to talk to him a little, though Ayla did most of it. I think I became something like a brother to him,” he said.
“It occurs to me,” Marthona said, “that if there is a possibility of trouble with—what do they call themselves? Clan people?—and they can communicate enough to negotiate, it could be very helpful to have someone like Ayla around who can talk to them, Joharran.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Zelandoni added. She had also been thinking about what Jondalar had said of the fearful effect Ayla’s animals had on people, though she didn’t mention it. It could be useful.
“That’s true, of course, mother, but it’s going to be hard to get used to the idea of talking to flatheads, or calling them something else, and I’m not the only one who’s going to have trouble,” Joharran said. He paused, then shook his head as if to himself. “If they talk with their hands, how do you know they’re really talking and not just waving their arms around?”
Everyone looked at Ayla. She turned to Jondalar.
“I think you should show them,” he said, “and maybe you could talk at the same time, the way you did when you were talking to Guban and translating for me.”
“What should I say?”
“Why not just greet them, as if you were speaking for Guban?” he said.
Ayla thought for a time. She couldn’t really greet them the way Guban would. He was a man, and a woman would never greet anyone the same way a man would. She could make a greeting sign, that gesture was always the same, but one never made only a greeting sign. It was always modified depending on who was making it and to whom it was being made. And there really was no sign for a person of the Clan to greet one of the Others. It had never been done before, not in a formal, acknowledged way. Perhaps she could think of how it would be done if they ever had to. She stood up and backed into the clear area in the middle of the main room.
“This woman would greet you, People of the Others,” Ayla began, then paused. “Or perhaps one should say People of the Mother,” she said, trying to think of how the Clan might make the signs.
“Try Children of the Mother, or Children of the Great Earth Mother,” Jondalar suggested.
She nodded and started over. “This woman … called Ayla, would greet you, Children of Doni, the Great Earth Mother.” She said her own name and that of the Mother in verbal sounds, but with the inflection and tonal quality of the Clan. The rest was communicated with signs in formal Clan language and spoken in Zelandonii.
“This woman would hope that at some time you would be greeted by one of the Clan of the Cave Bear, and that the greeting would be returned. The Mog-ur told this woman the Clan is ancient, the memories go deep. The Clan was here when the new ones came. They named the new ones, the Others, the ones who were not Clan. The Clan chose to go their own way, to avoid the Others. That is the Clan way and Clan traditions change slowly, yet some of the Clan would begin to change, would make new traditions. If that is to be, this woman would hope that the change would harm neither Clan nor Others.”
Her Zelandoni translation was spoken in a soft-voiced monotone, with as much precision and as little accent as she could. The words told them what she was saying, but they could see that she was not making random hand wavings. The purposeful gestures, the subtle motion of the body indicating a movement, lifting the head in pride, bowing in acquiescence, even raising an eyebrow, all flowed together smoothly with graceful intention. Though the significance of each motion was not clear, that her movements
had meaning was.
The total effect was startling, and beautiful; it sent a shiver down Marthona’s back. She glanced at Zelandoni, who caught her quick look and nodded. She, too, had felt something profound. Jondalar noticed the discreet byplay; he was watching those who Were watching Ayla and could see the impression she was making. Joharran was staring in rapt attention with a frown creasing his forehead; Willamar had a slight smile and was nodding approval; Folara’s smile was unabashed. She was so delighted, he had to smile, too.
When she was done, Ayla sat down at the table again, lowering herself to a cross-legged position with an elegant ease that was more noticeable after her performance. There was an uneasy silence around the table. No one knew quite what to say, and each felt they needed time to think. Finally Folara felt compelled to fill the void.
“That was wonderful, Ayla! Beautiful, almost like a dance,” she said.
“It’s hard for me to think of it that way. It’s the way they talk. Although I remember that I used to love to watch the storytellers,” Ayla said.
“It was very expressive,” Marthona said, then looked at her son. “You can do that, too, Jondalar?”
“Not like Ayla can. She taught the people of Lion Camp so they could communicate with Rydag. They had some fun at their Summer Meeting with it because they could talk to each other without anyone else knowing it,” he said.
“Rydag, wasn’t that the child with the bad heart?” Zelandoni asked. “Why couldn’t he talk like everyone else?”
Jondalar and Ayla looked at each other. “Rydag was half Clan, and had the same difficulty making sounds that they do,” Ayla said. “So I taught him and the Lion Camp his language.”
“Half Clan?” Joharran said. “You mean half flathead? A half flathead abomination!”
“He was a child!” Ayla said, glaring at him in anger. “Just like any other child. No child is an abomination!”
Joharran was surprised at her reaction, then recalled that she had been raised by them and understood why she would feel offended. He tried to stutter an apology. “I … I … I’m sorry. It’s what everyone thinks.”
Zelandoni stepped in to calm the situation. “Ayla, you must remember, we haven’t had time to consider everything you have said. We have always thought of your Clan people as animals, and something half human and half animal as an abomination. I’m sure you must be correct, this … Rydag was a child.”
She’s right, Ayla said to herself, and it isn’t as if you didn’t know how the Zelandonii felt. Jondalar made that clear the first time you mentioned Durc. She tried to compose herself.
“But, I’d like to understand something,” Zelandoni continued, searching for a way to ask her questions without offending the stranger. “The person named Nezzie was the mate of the headman of the Lion Camp, is that correct?”
“Yes.” Ayla could see where she was leading and glanced at Jondalar. She felt sure he was trying to repress a smile. It made her feel better; he knew, too, and was taking some perverse delight in the discomfiture of the powerful donier.
“This child, this Rydag, was hers?”
Jondalar almost wished Ayla would say yes, just to make them think. It had taken a lot for him to overcome the beliefs of his people, bred into him since childhood, practically with his mother’s milk. If they thought a woman who had given birth to an “abomination” could become the mate of a headman, it might shake that belief a bit, and the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that for their own good, for their own safety, his people had to change, had to accept the fact that the Clan were people, too.
“She nursed him,” Ayla explained, “along with her own daughter. He was the son of a Clan woman who was alone and died shortly after his birth. Nezzie adopted him, just as Iza adopted me when I had no one to take care of me.”
It was still a shock, and in some ways even more startling because the headman’s mate had voluntarily chosen to care for the newborn who could have been left to the with its mother. A silence descended upon the group as each one paused to consider what had just been learned.
* * *
Wolf had stayed behind in the valley where the horses were grazing to explore the new territory After a time that was appropriate to him and for his own reasons, he decided to return to the place that Ayla had made him understand was home, the place he should go when he wanted to find her. Like all of his kind, the wolf moved with efficient speed and such effortless grace, he seemed to be floating as he loped through the wooded landscape. Several people were in Wood River Valley picking berries. One man caught a glimpse of Wolf moving like a silent wraith between the trees.
“That wolf is coming! And he’s by himself!” the man shouted. He scrambled out of the way as fast as he could.
“Where’s my baby?” a woman cried in a panic. She looked around, saw her toddler, and ran to pick her up and carry her away.
When Wolf reached the path that led to the ledge, he ran up it with the same supple, fast-moving pace.
“There’s that wolf. I don’t like the idea of a wolf coming up here, right onto our ledge,” another woman said.
“Joharran said we should allow him to come and go as he wants, but I’m going to get my spear,” a man said. “Maybe he won’t hurt anyone, but I don’t trust that animal.”
People backed out of the way to give him a wide berth when Wolf reached the ledge at the top of the path and headed directly for Marthona’s dwelling. One man knocked over several spear shafts when he bumped into them in his hurry to put plenty of clearance between himself and the efficient, four-legged hunter. The wolf sensed the fear of the people around him and didn’t like it, but he continued toward the location Ayla had indicated he was to go.
The silence within Marthona’s dwelling was shattered when Willamar, catching sight of the entrance drape moving, suddenly jumped up and shouted. “There’s a wolf! Great Mother, how did that wolf get here?”
“It’s all right, Willamar,” Marthona said, trying to calm him. “He’s allowed in here.” Folara caught her eldest brother’s eye and smiled, and though Joharran was still nervous around the animal, he could give her a knowing smile back.
“That’s Ayla’s wolf,” Jondalar said, getting up to ward off any hasty reactions as Ayla rushed to the entrance to settle the animal, who had been more scared than Willamar to be greeted by such loud, frantic noise in the place he had been shown to come. Wolf’s tail was between his legs, his hackles were raised, and his teeth were bared.
If Zelandoni could have, she would have jumped up just as fast as Willamar. A loud, menacing growl seemed to be directed specifically at her, and she shook with fear. Even though she had heard about Ayla’s animals and seen them from a distance, she was terrified by the huge predator that had entered the dwelling. She had never been so close to a wolf; in the wild wolves usually ran away from groups of people.
She watched with amazement as Ayla fearlessly hurried toward Wolf, stooped down, put her arms around him, and held him, speaking words, only some of which she understood, seeking to calm the animal. The wolf first became excited, and licked the neck and face of the woman while she fondled him, then did indeed calm down. It was the most unbelievable demonstration of supernatural powers she had ever witnessed. Just what kind of mysterious ability did this woman possess to command that land of control over such an animal? She felt gooseflesh raise at the thought.
Willamar had calmed down as well, with the encouragement of Marthona and Jondalar, and after seeing Ayla with the wolf.
“I think Willamar should meet Wolf, don’t you, Ayla?” Marthona said.
“Especially since they are going to be sharing the same dwelling,” Jondalar said. Willamar gaped at him with an amazed look of disbelief.
Ayla stood up and walked toward them, signaling Wolf to follow closely. “The way Wolf gets acquainted is to become familiar with your scent. If you hold out your hand to let him smell it…,” she started to say, reaching for his hand.
The man pulled it away. “Are you sure about this?” he said, looking at Marthona.
His mate smiled, then held out her hand toward the wolf. He smelled her hand, then licked it. “You gave some of us quite a fright, Wolf, coming in unannounced before you had met everyone,” she said.
Willamar was still a bit hesitant, but he could hardly do less than Marthona had, and put his hand forward. Ayla introduced Wolf in the usual manner, saying for the man’s benefit, as the wolf took in his scent, “Wolf, this is Willamar. He lives here with Marthona.” The wolf licked him, then gave a little yip.
“Why did he do that?” Willamar asked, drawing his hand back quickly.
“I’m not sure, but perhaps he smelled Marthona on you, and he warmed to her very quickly,” Ayla suggested. “Try petting or scratching him.” As though Willamar’s tentative scratching only tickled, Wolf suddenly curled up and vigorously scratched behind his own ear, bringing smiles and chuckles at his rather undignified posture. When he was through, he went straight to Zelandoni.
She eyed him warily, but stood her ground. She had been terrified when the wolf appeared at the entrance of the dwelling. Jondalar was more aware of her reaction than the others. He had seen her petrified fear. They had been concerned about Willamar, who had jumped up and shouted, and hadn’t noticed the quiet terror of the woman. She was just as glad they hadn’t. One Who Served The Mother was thought of as fearless, and in fact, that was generally true. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt such alarm.
“I think he knows he hasn’t met you, Zelandoni,” Jondalar said. “And since he’s going to be living here, I think you should be introduced to each other, too.” From the way he looked at her, she guessed that Jondalar knew how frightened she had been, and acknowledged it with a nod.
“I think you’re right. What is it that I’m supposed to do, give him my hand?” she said, thrusting it toward the wolf. He sniffed, then licked, then, with no warning, took her hand with his teeth and held it in his mouth with a low growl.